


Season of the Bitch

by escritoireazul



Category: Hänsel und Gretel | Hansel and Gretel (Fairy Tale)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Roller Derby, Family, Gen, Sibling Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-07
Updated: 2011-01-07
Packaged: 2017-10-14 13:15:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/149578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/escritoireazul/pseuds/escritoireazul
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some days it's like being lost in the woods or shoved into an oven by a witch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Season of the Bitch

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aphrodite_mine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aphrodite_mine/gifts).



> Prompt: sweet  
> Author's Note: Gretel does roller derby, dudes. I do not do roller derby (at least not yet), but tried to do my research. Probably I didn't get it exactly right. Sorry.

Gretel straps on kneepads and elbow pads and wrist guards and a helmet, shoves a guard into her mouth. From behind it, she bares her teeth at Hansel. He salutes her and skates away backward, his rainbow wheels flashing as he goes. He’s wearing blades, she’s got quads, but they match anyway. Even when they don’t, they really always do.

Hansel loves hockey second best -- she comes first of course -- and she played for awhile, until she found derby. God, derby. Some days it’s like she was lost in the woods, following breadcrumbs half devoured by the world as soon as she tried to find them and only derby, skates strapped to her feet and a good hip check her best weapon, showed her the way out. Some days it’s like she’s been shoved in an oven cranked up to a thousand and the witch in her head cackles a litany of her failures while she watches Gretel burn.

Gretel pushes away from the wall and follows Hansel across the room. They do that a lot; he came out first and she came second, reaching for his heels so he couldn’t leave her behind.

But this is her world first and though Hansel skates a big circle around her, when she’s ready, he falls back and lets her shine, because his place in derby is cheering her on. When they leave here, they’ll hold hands and skip off into flowering meadows together meta-fucking-phorically, but here she’s head bitch in charge.

She’s even got a fanclub, even got her own chant -- It’s the season of the bitch, thank you very much -- and when she skates around the track with Hansel, warming up and listening to his silence, her fans are there early, cheering her on.

They love the her she shows the world, and that’s good enough for her. Hansel gets it all, her anger and her frustration and her tears, her breakdown and her fury, the way she lashed out so hard when she saw the damn comment thread on the article about them, all those anonymous shits calling them sluts and whores and fat bitches and fucking lesbians who just needed a good dick. That got shut down pretty fast, but not fast enough, and every time she walks past the newspaper office now she glares and wants to know who the hell there hates her enough to let that go up at all.

That day she hit her resistance wall and almost cried during practice and the only thing that got her through was slugging back so much water she had to piss ten times before she got home and then Hansel sat with her and listened to her spit out half formed phrases and plied her with hot cinnamon treats, her favorite.

All the times she’s felt dumb and slow and weak and not good enough and like she’d never be good enough, he’s been there through all of them and more. He gets to see her weakest points because they’re his too, just like his are hers, because they are a team, damn it, and more, they are everything.

And because she has Hansel -- and because she has her derby girls, who get more pieces of her than anyone else but him -- she cocks her hip and flips off the world and shows of that flashy, intense, I can do anything attitude she’s grown to love.

Hansel flashes her a grin and skates off to watch from the sidelines. He trusts her to find her own way, to find the best path through life for both of them, and because he does, she can.

#

They lose, but it’s a near thing. They win about half their bouts these days, maybe a little more, and fought hard for this one. So she’s a little frustrated after, but mostly she’s sweaty and high on the joy of skating and a couple really good hits she got in and when Hansel comes up to her after and slings his arm around her waist, stinky as she is, and hands her a giant cinnamon lollipop, she laughs and dangles her helmet from its strap and takes a big bite, crunching it and the loss between her sharp teeth.


End file.
